Cyprus is ready to contribute to AI development in Europe, Deputy Minister says

Cyprus is ready to participate in the development of Artificial Intelligence technologies in Europe, the Deputy Minister for Research, Innovation and Digital Policy, Nicodemos Damianou, has said.

He was speaking on the occasion of the recent meeting of the Transport, Telecommunications and Energy Council of the EU, held on Friday in Luxembourg, in its telecommunications configuration.

Referring to an upcoming discussion on AI and on mobilising investments for the creation of AI Gigafactories in Europe, Damianou said that “Cyprus is ready to engage and participate through our active research and innovation community, our engineering talent, but also through global and regional network collaborations”.

“We envision a balanced, well-structured, well-governed approach to this initiative that safeguards EU sovereignty, but also invites global investments in this sort of public - private partnerships that will make this a future-proof initiative to strengthen Europe's AI stance,” he added.

Referring to the discussion on a stronger, more resilient digital Europe, the Deputy Minister said that the main issue discussed will be the reliability of connectivity which is “the digital backbone of Europe” and added that “we need to make sure that it remains strong, secure and robust from the submarine cables to satellite communications to the upcoming 6G networks.”

Damianou added that Cyprus supports expediting the work on the IRIS² satellite program “as we see this as a pillar of true strategic autonomy in the technology space for Europe”.

“Within the same spectrum, we are interested in discussing the blueprint recommendation on cyber crisis management,” he added, pointing out that “this is a timely discussion as we need to make sure that Europe maintains its capacity and ability to respond to very large - scale cyber threats and incidents”.

Damianou also referred to the MED9 Digital Ministerial held last week, during which the ministers “reaffirmed our shared commitment to work together to accelerate digital transition by focusing particularly on AI innovation and other emerging technologies to tackle and address common challenges”.

Finally, the Deputy Minister said that Cyprus co-signed a joint initiative by France, Greece, Spain, Denmark and Slovenia on the protection of minors online. “We feel this is a shared responsibility we all have to protect our younger generation, our children in this constantly complicated digital world,” he said.

(Source: CNA)